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KOL NIDRE - Rabbi Batsheva Meiri
I guess you get a lot of stuff on the internet that you didn’t ask for, too. This one came to me a short time ago and I thought I’d share it with you tonight. Its called:
A Jewish Mother’s guide to Buddhism:
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single.... "Oy!"
Wherever you go, there you are..... Your luggage, that’s another story!
Own nothing but your robes and alms bowl.....Unless, of course, you have the closet space!
Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen.....
And sit up straight. You’ll never meet the Buddha with a posture like that!
Learn of the pine from the pine. Learn of the bamboo from the bamboo......
Learn of the kugel from the kugel!
There is no escaping karma.... In a previous life you never called, you never wrote,
you never visited! And whose fault was that?
Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions.....
Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness!
The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all sentient beings.....
Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?
Be patient and achieve all things.... Be impatient and achieve all things faster!
Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness....
And then what do you have? Bupkes.
I have nothing against Jewish mothers. I am one. And I also have one. And I am not trying to be irreverent a night like this, filled with such awe. But humor is oftentimes a mechanism to recognize a difficult truth about ourselves. So when this piece came across my computer screen, in addition to inspiring a chuckle, it tugged at something very personal and close to my heart. It reminded me of all the times I have had conversations with people who were raised as Jews, but who are more attracted to other forms of spirituality than they are inspired by their own heritage. Nearly 15 years ago, I began this path that led me to the rabbinate because I felt that Judaism had a vital message that could reach our people, and I wanted to be its messenger. Only to discover that for a myriad of reasons, people are not identifying with the message. The most recent National Jewish Population Survey bears this out: the Jewish people continues to bleed members. For example, there are 800,000 people in our country who have at least one Jewish parent, were raised as Jews, but don’t consider themselves Jews at all. And countless others who report that they consider themselves to be culturally Jewish, but are turning to yoga, new age or Zen Buddhist practice for their spirituality. And perhaps it is, in part because, as the Jewish Mother’s Guide to Buddhism suggests, Judaism today appears to be too worldly, and very unspiritual. Perhaps the message that has been heard is that being Jewish is about how many times our children call us, not the content of the relationship. Being Jewish is about marrying a Jew, not finding love. Being Jewish is about making a good living, not about living a good life. The High Holidays are more about what you’re seen in on the outside, than what you show of your insides. Judaism is more about the kugel and the matzah balls, than it is nourishment for our minds, our hearts and our souls.
And these aren’t the messages which speak to the 800,000 who don’t consider themselves Jews at all, and the countless others who have turned to alternative forms of spirituality. They probably don’t speak well to you, and they aren’t the messages that I went into the rabbinate to preach, either.
It is ironic that just as Jews poke fun at ourselves for being too worldly, we also denigrate ourselves for being too spiritual. Like the joke how many Rabbis does it take to change a light bulb? A light bulb? What is a light bulb? The message that Judaism is exclusively concerned with otherworldly pursuits is equally unsatisfying to most of us. We modern Jews have often tried to cast off the image of being people who are removed and out of touch with the real world. We are uncomfortable with those communities who study and pray as though these acts would bring about the Messiah. And we are afraid to let our own souls rise in ecstatic prayer as though we might touch the divine or be touched by it, because in doing so, we feel we must let go of this world, of the real world, and we won’t be able to come back, or regain control.
The misconception that Judaism is either too worldly or too spiritual is the preeminent background noise of the Jewish community we all inhabit. And it is a shame that it turns people off to Jewish life. However, anyone who does yoga or meditates knows you must learn how to screen out the distracting noises of life, to get to the quiet place you want to be. The same is true if you want to hear the real message Jewish life has to offer. You have to cut through the clatter, reach inside the core, find out what is there.
Many before me to find the core, the essence, the real "message." Many before me have tried to condense Judaism to its most essential elements: Maimonides’ 13 articles of faith, the 613 commandments, the Golden rule. That is not what I want to do tonight, nor is it fair to the richness of our religious tradition. Its like the old joke about the two Jewish men who were once riding together in an airplane and began conversing. One was an astronomer and the other a rabbi. When the astronomer found out that his seat mate was a rabbi, he smugly remarked, "I’m not religious myself and I hardly ever go to Temple... I have doubts about God and am not sure who wrote the Bible. But I do have the deepest respect for religion. After all doesn’t it, Temple, Bible, God, Judaism and all that, doesn’t it REALLY all boil down to "Love Your Neighbor?" The rabbi replied, "Let me answer your question with a question. [typical] I am not a scientist myself or an astronomer. I have trouble with differential equations and calculus...but I have the deepest respect for astronomy. And doesn’t all of it, quasars, black holes, galaxies, don’t they REALLY boil down to "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star?"
I don’t want to boil down Jewish tradition into one sermon. But what I want you take away with you tonight is what I, in the quietest and the most turbulent moments of my spiritual connection, have found to be one of the most profound pillars of our faith. It shows Judaism not to be all spiritual, nor all this worldly. But truly focused on a blending of the two. It comes from the simple idea: kol adam nivra b’zelem elohim - every person is created in the divine image. B’tzelem Elohim: in the image of God. It is not only a beautiful idea, but one which marries the physical and the spiritual worlds. A living principle which restores the true balance between those two worlds from which we seek meaning and inspiration:
the world of flesh and blood and the world of the soul, the imperfect world of reality and the perfect world of godly ideals, the changing temporal world and the world of the eternal.
You’ve probably been taught what Rabbi Akiva believed was the most fundamental principle of the Torah: "V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha, You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The reason why Akiva chose the Golden rule as a cardinal spiritual law is obvious. Presumably, loving our neighbor, leads us to treating him in an equitable and caring way. But what do we do about our neighbor who is difficult to love: the convicted child-molester who moves in two doors away, or the suicide bomber who kills our people in Israel and in our country. We may even find it hard to find love for the 7 year-old bully down the street you’ve seen taunting your child. Moreover, the directive to love our neighbor implies that we need only to extend this special treatment to those in proximity to us. How is it possible to cultivate love for the starving children in Ethiopia and Eretria? The Talmud records that Akiva’s colleague, Ben Azzai, responded to these shortcomings in the Golden Rule by offering an alternative fundamental principle citing the verse in Genesis where it says, "Zeh sefer toldot Adam, This is the Book of the generations of humanity, "bidemut Elohim asah oto," created in the image of God..." It is this verse which reminds us that we all trace our ancestry to one set of human parents and one creator in whose image we are made. So when someone appears to be an "other," they are really just like us, and should be treated by us as such. This means that the children in Ethiopia deserve to be starving no more than our own children. Their lives hold just as much promise, sparks of the divine. And that the suicide bomber, the child molester and the 7 year old bully have their stories too.
And we have great need to understand those stories and how the divine image has been hidden in them. In modern times, Hermann Cohen and Martin Buber understood Ben Azzai’s thinking, and used it to revise the Golden Rule to: "Be loving to your fellow man, as to one who is like you." They shifted the emphasis from telling us what to feel, to mandating our actions. Be loving to others. Treat them in loving ways. Why? Because they, too, are God’s creations.
And this I believe is what speaks to today’s spiritual seeker, you and me: a way to be in this world and also to connect to that which is holy. B’tzelem Elohim, we are created in the divine image. Our task is to be partners with God in the shaping of our world. This is a very old idea, flowing from the Jewish mystical tradition, which suggests at the moment of creation, God impaired reality in order that human beings could repair its flaws. When we repair the world, when we make whole that which is broken, we are acting b’zelem elohim, in the image of God. We are doing something real and also very spiritual. Rabbi Joseph Soloveichik said, the task of humanity is to "transform the emptiness in being into a perfect and holy existence bearing the imprint of the divine name." In other words, we shouldn’t see that holiness lies elsewhere and try to find it by escaping from the world. Rather, we achieve holiness when we engage and transform our world. For him, for me and for us, b’tzelem Elohim in the image of God, is not just an idea. It is a spiritual focus a call for action. And it can inform every aspect of our lives.
For instance, globalization is forcing our world to learn how individual economies impact one another. However, World Trade Organization talks in Cancun this summer broke down. As Jews who affirm the centrality of B’tzelem Elohim, we cannot let America walk away from the table and leave the people in developing nations to starve, to endure substandard working conditions, and to have their land polluted and raped by American companies seeking cheap labor and resources. How in good conscience can we treat the people of these countries in unconscionable ways, ways we wouldn’t tolerate our own citizens to be treated. The principle of B’tzelem Elohim presses us to examine how can we support an administration which simultaneously seeks to beef up the military, while cutting proven programs like Head Start, for the poorest in our midst.
These are not simply knee jerk democratic political ideals. When we talk about shelters for battered women, health insurance for the underprivileged, fair living wages, we are being Jews, spiritual people who believe that each and every person is entitled have their life be an expression of the divine. B’tzelem Elohim means that we have to run our businesses as places which not only are profit driven but are driven by the mission of giving dignity to the lives of those who work for us and with us. We can’t crush others on our way to the top, we need to find ways to acknowledge their partnership in our success. The clerk at the grocery store, the man who manicures our lawn but doesn’t speak English very well, even the telemarketer who interrupts dinner, is a person created in the image of God.
The Jewish community, our rituals and teachings, are not ends in of themselves. They are intended to ennoble us, to help us elevate our existence beyond self interest, beyond greed, beyond the quest for power and recognition.
The Jewish community, rituals and teachings ought never help us escape from the challenges of the real world, but engage us in acts of loving kindness and repair.
This is where I began a long time ago. As a young woman who wanted to find a way to teach the real message of Judaism. And in one form or another, this is what it has always been for me, and what I think it can be for you. Leave here tonight, with eyes and hearts open to that other reality that the world isn’t made up of the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. And Judaism is not so far out that you can’t reach it or so crass that you don’t want to touch it. Rather the world is an opportunity for human creativity and Judaism is both here and now, and high and holy, teaching us that each one of us has dignity and purpose. Offering each one of us opportunity to recognize the divine presence in ourselves when we see it in everyone around us, and promising us that the good we do today contributes holiness to the world of tomorrow. This is what it means to be made B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. If we have anything to atone for, perhaps its losing sight of God’s image in ourselves and those around us. If there is anything we can do to make this night powerful, it is to allow our rituals and our prayers to call forth within us the spirit of holiness and the purpose of being God’s partners in transforming our world.
